How to join only one column?

Question

SELECT * FROM table1 LEFT JOIN table2 ON table1.id = table2.table1_id WHERE table1.id = 1 

I need to join only one column from table 2, say first_name. How can I do that?

Answer 1

Assuming that you mean "select one column from table 2":

   SELECT table1.*, table2.first_name      FROM table1 LEFT JOIN table2 ... 

Answer 2

The accepted answer is the correct answer but I have encountered a strange error when the tables are in two different databases:

Assuming that table1 is in database1 and table2 is in database2. Initially I have tried this:

SELECT *, database2.table2.first_name  FROM table1 LEFT JOIN database2.table2 ON database1.table1.id = database2.table2.table1_id WHERE table1.id = 1 

The strange thing is that if I try this query from PHP PDO there were no errors but the result contained all columns from database2.table2 (expected only first_name column).

But if I have tried the same query from phpmyadmin got a sintax error:

Table 'database2.table1' doesn't exist

So, for solve that, then all databases need to be specified implicitly like this:

SELECT database1.table1.*, database2.table2.first_name  FROM database1.table1 LEFT JOIN database2.table2 ON database1.table1.id = database2.table2.table1_id WHERE database1.table1.id = 1